As you can notice, Takehiro is working furiously in what is to become Lame 4.

There are checkins by me too, but I only take care of the web pages really (my biggest recent contribution was cleaning the links page throughly, removing dead links and updating existing ones, as well as making the WYSIWYG-generated code more usable).

This post has been edited by rjamorim: May 6 2005, 03:56

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Get up-to-date binaries of Lame, AAC, Vorbis and much more at RareWares:http://www.rarewares.org

In other words, will there be an on going comparison between 4.0 and the 3.9x branch, that will ultimately only be resolved say with a series of 4.x releases?

That seems very probable to me. Of course, there is the possibility, that the initial 4.0 performs so well that this will be resolved soon. From what i have read, the changes in 4.0 are very significant, so comparisions will probable happen. What seems most probable to me, is that 3.97 will become the "stable" variant while work is being done on 4.0 becoming "the next big thing". Someone more involved in lame may be able to clarify this.

I'm wondering when 4.0 comes out will that be tuned to the same degree as 3.96.1 and 3.97?

Or will tuning LAME 4 require a new effort (listening tests etc) because the code will be changed so much, removing a lot of limitations but altering the basic characteristic of the encoder?

In other words, will there be an on going comparison between 4.0 and the 3.9x branch, that will ultimately only be resolved say with a series of 4.x releases?

From what I read at lame-dev, it seems Lame 4 won't have the same quality as 3.9x series at launch time. But it'll be waaay faster (faster than 3.96.1 even) and much easier to tune. So while it won't have the same quality, quality is expected to progress quite quickly.

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Get up-to-date binaries of Lame, AAC, Vorbis and much more at RareWares:http://www.rarewares.org

From what I read at lame-dev, it seems Lame 4 won't have the same quality as 3.9x series at launch time. But it'll be waaay faster (faster than 3.96.1 even) and much easier to tune. So while it won't have the same quality, quality is expected to progress quite quickly.

There are checkins by me too, but I only take care of the web pages really (my biggest recent contribution was cleaning the links page throughly, removing dead links and updating existing ones, as well as making the WYSIWYG-generated code more usable).

Why is there work being done on a 4.x version (hence the alphas... ), when there isn't a stable/final release of 3.97 yet?Does this have to do with different teams of developers?

To make things simple: Takehiro works on 4.0, Gabriel and Robert work on 3.x

So, yeah, you could consider them "different teams"

Maybe I'm getting on your nerves now (don't mean to) but, why isn't Takehiro working on 3.97 together with Gabriel and Robert?Or vice versa...., why not drop further developement of 3.97 and concentrate all efforts on 4.x?

I guess one part of the long 3.97 alpha story is that the developers want to present a version that is accepted as the new 'recommended build' by everyone ... to succeed in that, 3.97 has to be 'better' than 3.90.3 in every aspect (encoding speed, filesize, preset transparency) which does need a lot of testing and fine-tuning (hence the large number of alphas). Maybe 3.97 will even be the last 3.x version.

Given the fact that 4.x is based on totally re-written code IIRC, we can expect 3.97 final to stick around a long time before there is a useable 4.x build to reliably encode your music with ... so personally I don't care if the developers take the time needed to present a flawless build.

Why is there work being done on a 4.x version (hence the alphas... ), when there isn't a stable/final release of 3.97 yet?Does this have to do with different teams of developers?

To make things simple: Takehiro works on 4.0, Gabriel and Robert work on 3.x

So, yeah, you could consider them "different teams"

Maybe I'm getting on your nerves now (don't mean to) but, why isn't Takehiro working on 3.97 together with Gabriel and Robert?Or vice versa...., why not drop further developement of 3.97 and concentrate all efforts on 4.x?

Personally, I assume that the LAME devs are rational people and there are good reasons for why they are doing what they are doing, especially when the question you are asking has already been answered in the thread that is linked to by an earlier post in this one.

As I understand it, 4.0 is a major rewrite of the LAME code and if they waited until the 3.9x was completely done, there would be a very long wait for 4.0. At the same time, 3.9x has not been taken as far as it can go, and that is what the remaining tuning on 3.97 seeks to accomplish. That way 3.97 can ultimately stand as a benchmark against which 4.0 can be measured.